Simon Wickham-Smith
Encyclopedia
Simon Wickham-Smith is a British
musician
, translator, academic and sometime astrologer
. He first came to the attention of the experimental music underground with the release of Lake, a collaboration with Richard Youngs
issued under the moniker R!!!S!!!. He and Youngs would go on to make many more albums including Ceaucescu, Pulse Of The Rooster and Metallic Sonatas for labels such as Forced Exposure
, Majora and VHF
. He has also released a handful of solo albums, including Love & Lamentation. He is an occasional member of the Helsinki Computer Orchestra, an indication of his move towards computer based music during the late '90s and early part of this decade. A new collaboration with Richard Youngs
was released in 2006, the product of a five-year plan in which the duo recorded just 10 minutes of music each year. The album was titled 5 Years.
In 2006, with Pekka Kumpulainen, Wickham-Smith began the Inari Festival of Experimental Music (iFEM) in northern Finland. This small scale musical festival is thought to be the world's most northerly music festival.
In addition to his musical activities, Wickham-Smith is a member of the Association Of Professional Astrologers and, since 1998 has been researching the astrology of transgender
and intersex
people. He intends to publish a book on this subject.
In the early 1990s, while living in Davis, CA, Wickham-Smith began studying Tibetan and Mongolian as a hobby. Towards the end of that decade, he decided to concentrate on Mongolian literature, and although without an academic degree in this field embarked upon a translation into English of the complete poetry of Danzanravjaa
, the fifth Noyon Khutughtu of the Gobi (1803–1856), which was published in 2006. In 2005 he spent several months in Leipzig, Germany at the department of Central Asian Studies to publish a book about Tibetan folk Tales with the help of students. He has since published translations of many works of contemporary Mongolian literature, including Golden Hill (Altan Ovoo) by G Mend-Ooyo and The River Flows Gently (Gol Us Namuuhan Ursana) by O Dashbalbar.
In addition to these translations, Wickham-Smith is the international director of two Mongolian cultural organisations, the Mongolian Academy of Poetry and Culture and the Danzanravjaa Foundation, the general editor of the Kegan Paul Library of Mongolian Literature and a co-director of the Orchuulga Foundation, an organisation dedicated to the translation of Mongolian literature and the Center for Central Asian Literatures in Translation. He is currently a PhD student at the University of Washington in Seattle (dissertation topic: "The Interrelationship of Humans with their Environment in G.Mend-Ooyo's 'Altan Ovoo'", supervised by Professor Ilse Cirtautas).
He was also for some years a Tibetan Buddhist monk and has extensively researched the life and work of Tshangyang Gyatso
, the sixth Dalai Lama
(1683-1706/46).
In 2008, he was one of eight recipients of the PEN International Translation Fund grants, for his translation of the work of O Dashbalbar, and was recognised as a Leading Cultural Worker (Soyolin Terguuni Ajiltan) by the Government of Mongolia for his translation work.
- Frog Peak (A Composer's Collective)
10"
LP
Mongolian:
2006
2007
2008
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
, translator, academic and sometime astrologer
Astrologer
An astrologer practices one or more forms of astrology. Typically an astrologer draws a horoscope for the time of an event, such as a person's birth, and interprets celestial points and their placements at the time of the event to better understand someone, determine the auspiciousness of an...
. He first came to the attention of the experimental music underground with the release of Lake, a collaboration with Richard Youngs
Richard Youngs
Richard Youngs is a British musician with a prolific and diverse output, including many collaborations. Based in Glasgow since the early 1990s, his extensive back catalogue of solo and collaborative work formally begins with Advent, first issued in 1990...
issued under the moniker R!!!S!!!. He and Youngs would go on to make many more albums including Ceaucescu, Pulse Of The Rooster and Metallic Sonatas for labels such as Forced Exposure
Forced Exposure
Forced Exposure was an independent music magazine published sporadically out of Massachusetts from the early-'80s to 1993, edited by Jimmy Johnson and Byron Coley. It was printed on cheap newsprint with plain design and filled with corrosive yet humorous writing...
, Majora and VHF
VHF Records
VHF Records is an American record label, known for their extensive work with several major experimental artists. The label is based in the Washington, DC suburb of Fairfax, Va., and it initially focused on indie and experimental bands from that region...
. He has also released a handful of solo albums, including Love & Lamentation. He is an occasional member of the Helsinki Computer Orchestra, an indication of his move towards computer based music during the late '90s and early part of this decade. A new collaboration with Richard Youngs
Richard Youngs
Richard Youngs is a British musician with a prolific and diverse output, including many collaborations. Based in Glasgow since the early 1990s, his extensive back catalogue of solo and collaborative work formally begins with Advent, first issued in 1990...
was released in 2006, the product of a five-year plan in which the duo recorded just 10 minutes of music each year. The album was titled 5 Years.
In 2006, with Pekka Kumpulainen, Wickham-Smith began the Inari Festival of Experimental Music (iFEM) in northern Finland. This small scale musical festival is thought to be the world's most northerly music festival.
In addition to his musical activities, Wickham-Smith is a member of the Association Of Professional Astrologers and, since 1998 has been researching the astrology of transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
and intersex
Intersex
Intersex, in humans and other animals, is the presence of intermediate or atypical combinations of physical features that usually distinguish female from male...
people. He intends to publish a book on this subject.
In the early 1990s, while living in Davis, CA, Wickham-Smith began studying Tibetan and Mongolian as a hobby. Towards the end of that decade, he decided to concentrate on Mongolian literature, and although without an academic degree in this field embarked upon a translation into English of the complete poetry of Danzanravjaa
Danzanravjaa
Dulduityn Danzanravjaa was a prominent Mongolian writer, composer, painter and medic and the the Fifth Noyon Khutagt, the Lama of the Gobi...
, the fifth Noyon Khutughtu of the Gobi (1803–1856), which was published in 2006. In 2005 he spent several months in Leipzig, Germany at the department of Central Asian Studies to publish a book about Tibetan folk Tales with the help of students. He has since published translations of many works of contemporary Mongolian literature, including Golden Hill (Altan Ovoo) by G Mend-Ooyo and The River Flows Gently (Gol Us Namuuhan Ursana) by O Dashbalbar.
In addition to these translations, Wickham-Smith is the international director of two Mongolian cultural organisations, the Mongolian Academy of Poetry and Culture and the Danzanravjaa Foundation, the general editor of the Kegan Paul Library of Mongolian Literature and a co-director of the Orchuulga Foundation, an organisation dedicated to the translation of Mongolian literature and the Center for Central Asian Literatures in Translation. He is currently a PhD student at the University of Washington in Seattle (dissertation topic: "The Interrelationship of Humans with their Environment in G.Mend-Ooyo's 'Altan Ovoo'", supervised by Professor Ilse Cirtautas).
He was also for some years a Tibetan Buddhist monk and has extensively researched the life and work of Tshangyang Gyatso
Tsangyang Gyatso, 6th Dalai Lama
Tsangyang Gyatso was the sixth Dalai Lama. He was a Monpa by ethnicity and was born at Urgelling Monastery, 5 km from Tawang, Tibet and not far from the large Tawang Monastery in the northwestern part of present-day Arunachal Pradesh in India .He led a playboy lifestyle and disappeared, near...
, the sixth Dalai Lama
Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...
(1683-1706/46).
In 2008, he was one of eight recipients of the PEN International Translation Fund grants, for his translation of the work of O Dashbalbar, and was recognised as a Leading Cultural Worker (Soyolin Terguuni Ajiltan) by the Government of Mongolia for his translation work.
Recordings
Recordings of Simon Wickham-Smith's music can be purchased from, among others,- Frog Peak (A Composer's Collective)
Vinyl
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs/A Band: Zene/Salivating Regina (Baby Huey 007) (1992)
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: Worried About Heaven/Muscles in Your Head (Fourth Dimension FDS36) (1994)
- Breaking the Plastic Hymen: Vinyl Virgins and Lo-Fi Whores compilation featuring Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: Walking the Mongoose (Fisheye) (1996)
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: The Enigma of Rotons (Hells Half Halo) (1998)
10"
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: 444D (Fourth Dimension FDTEN50) (1995)
LP
- R!!!S!!!: Lake (2LP) (No Fans Records NFR02) (1990)
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: Ceaucescu (Forced Exposure FE029) (1992)
- Neil/Richard/Simon/Stewart: Durian Durian (Forced Exposure FE033) (1993)
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: Asthma & Diabetes (Majora) (1994)
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: Enedkeg (Majora) (1996)
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: Knish (Ignivomous Records IG07) (1996)
- Simon Wickham-Smith: Giladji (Giardia) (1999)
CD
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: Kretinmuzak (Slask SLACD 008)(1994)
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: VEIL (for Greg) (Insignificant Records INS 016) (1997)
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: Red and Blue Bear - The Opera (VHF27) (1997)
- Stand Up For Art Rock (Because Space Rock is Over) compilation featuring Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: The Hartford Address (Extract) (VHF29) (1997)
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: Pulse of the Rooster (VHF35) (1998)
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: Metallic Sonatas (VHF40) (1999)
- Simon Wickham-Smith: Butterfly Dust (VHF44) (1999)
- Simon Wickham-Smith: Adelaide Audio (VHF53) (2000)
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: Lake (CD reissue) (VHF52) (2000)
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: Lammergeier (VHF58) (2001)
- Simon Wickham-Smith: Extreme Bukake (VHF65) (2002)
- Simon Wickham-Smith: dyrø (PseudoArcana CDR) (2002)
- Simon Wickham-Smith: Murrinh Kulerrkkurrk (2CD) (Rhizome) (2004)
- Simon Wickham-Smith: Rapt (Disposable Thumb Recordings) (2004)
- Simon Wickham-Smith: two4dancin (Celebrate Psi Phenomena) (2005)
- Simon Wickham-Smith: Buckminsterfullerene/Pange Lingua Gloriosi (2CD) (Celebrate Psi Phenomena) (2005)
- Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs: 5 Years (VHF99) (2006)
- Simon Wickham-Smith: three4listenin (3CD) (Celebrate Psi Phenomena) (2007)
- Simon Wickham-Smith: love&lamentation (Pogus) (2008)
- Simon Wickham-Smith: Multiple Tongues (Electroshock) (2010)
Articles
- "The Making of a Myth: The Amazing Life and Death of the Sixth Dalai Lama" (International institute of Asian Studies [IIAS] Newsletter, Leiden, #32 November 2003, p27)
- "The Way of the World" (IIAS Newsletter, Leiden, #40 Spring 2006, p19)
- "Ban-de skya-min ser-min: Tsangs-dbyangs rGya-mtsho’s complex, confused and confusing relationship with sDe-srid Sangs-rgyas rGya-mtsho as portrayed in the Tsangs-dbyangs rGya-mtsho’i mgu-glu" in Bryan Cuevas and Kurtis Schaeffer (Eds) Tibet in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Proceedings of the 10th International Association of Tibetan Studies Seminar, Oxford 2003) (Leiden, Brill, 2006)
- "Danzanravjaa is my hero! The transformation of Tradition in contemporary Mongolian poetry" (IIAS Newsletter, Leiden, #44 Summer 2007, pp28–31)
- "The Negotiation of Cultural Difference in Translating Contemporary Mongolian Literature" (forthcoming, Proceedings of the 8th Central Eurasian Studies Society Conference, Seattle 2007)
Translations
Tibetan:- Tshangs dbyangs rGya mtsho’i mgu glu (66 poems, the so-called “Love Poems”, frequently translated, though almost certainly not the work of the Dalai Lama)
- Rig ‘dzin Tshangs dbyangs rGya mtsho’i gsung mgur (460 poems, including many from the “Love Poems”, the first English translation of the largest and most important collection of the popular verse-form called gzhas)
- Tshangs dbyangs rGya mtsho’i gsang rnam (the first English translation of the so-called “Secret Biography”, possibly a fraudulent text told to an innocent Mongolian monk, but purported to be the verbatim account of the 6th Dalai Lama of his life, in particular his disappearance from Lhasa and subsequent wanderings across Tibet and Mongolia)
Mongolian:
2006
- Perfect Qualities: The Collected Poems of the 5th Noyon Khutagt Danzanravjaa (1803-1856)
- (with Sh Tsog) Ancient Splendor: The Best of Mongolian Poetry
2007
- G Mend-Ooyo Golden Hill
- G Mend-Ooyo Nomadic Lyrics
- (with Sh Tsog) A Very Big White Elephant: New Voices in Mongolian Poetry
- (with Sh Tsog) The Best of Mongolian Poetry
- O Dashbalbar The River Flows Gently
2008
- O Dashbalbar The Battle for our Land has Begun
- Ts Erdenetsogt Sky of Mind
- J Dashdondog Mom, Dad and Me
- (with Sh Tsog) An Anthology of Mongolian Literature